Jagged Alliance

Developer(s)

Publisher(s)

Release date

June 2nd, 1994 (MS-DOS)May 5th, 2009 (Nintendo DS)

Genre(s)

Turn-based tactical role-playing game

Mode(s)

Single player

Platforms

MS-DOSNintendo DS

Jagged Alliance is the first game in the Jagged Alliance series. It was released for MS-DOS in 1994 and for the Nintendo DS in 2009. The MS-DOS version was developed by Madlab Software while the DS version was made by Strategy First, Inc.

Contents

During the Cold War, the South Pacific island of Metavira was the site of a series of numerous chemical and nuclear warfare experiments. Sometime later, scientists Jack Richards and his daughter Brenda discovered that the Metaviran Fallow Tree, mutated by these experiments, will produce a sap with wondrous medicinal properties that would cure any disease. These trees, rendered infertile by the same experiments that granted them their wondrous property, were quickly taken under the Richards' care, and they established a research facility on the island to research ways to turn the sap into medicine, and to find a way to solve the trees' infertility.

However, one of Jack's most trusted employees, Lucas Santino, saw the value in the incredibly rare trees and sought to control them for his own gain. After convincing Jack to allow him to establish a second research facility on the other side of the island, Santino began bringing in numerous armed mercenaries, who killed the other research staff, intimidated the native population, and soon took near total control of the island. Beaten, desperate and with the-end-of-disease-as-we-know-it at stake, the Richards hired a commander from A.I.M. to help him fight back, recapture the island, and kill Lucas Santino.

A fickle, sensitive and often temperamental cast of hirable mercenaries. In addition to fighting for you and taking your money, mercenaries in Jagged Alliance and its sequel Deadly Games were prone to:

Stubbornness. Several mercs are of the type to not back down once a firefight has started, and will refuse to take orders until their target has been killed.

Infighting. Many mercs have a severe dislike of others, and express this dislike in various ways. Some will quit if forced to continually work with the person they dislike. Others will go the extra yard and kill them during downtime between days.

Buddyism. Mercs can quit in protest if a friend of theirs is fired. Persuading them to stay can usually be managed with a hefty raise.

Toadyism. Several mercs will snitch on their fellows during downtime, letting you know if certain mercs are particularly dissatisfied or on the verge of quitting.

Thievery. When money is found, certain mercs - especially cheap or poorly paid mercs - will take the money for themselves at the end of the day and disappear, assumedly to go on vacation.

Cowardice. A few mercs are abject cowards and will not only perform poorly in combat, but quit the moment someone - anyone - is killed, including the enemy.

Underhanded enemy tactics such as detonating buildings you are trying to capture or attempting to kidnap important NPCs means that tactics remain key both on macro and micro levels.